With all the venting I’m doing on my blog lately, you might be wondering how I account for my political views in my fiction. Some who only know me from my blog might wonder if I come across as Ayn Rand in drag. And there’s certainly room in the SF/Fantasy real for the well-written polemic, some of our best fiction was written with a political POV in mind. (Though some insist that it isn’t SF because it’s SERIOUS.)
Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to write polemic well. For every 1984 there’re a dozen dystopias that fall flat on their face. Fortunately, that’s not my problem since I don’t do polemics.
People write for a lot of reasons, some to make a political point, some to create art, I write to entertain. (I only dis the first two when their proponents dis me.) So, even though it’s impossible to write fiction that isn’t informed by your own point of view, I make a real effort to try and give everyone in my stories a solid reason for their own outlook and have them behave believably in that context. Even when they’re diametrically opposed to my own thinking. I also work extra hard not to give the characters I’m sympathetic to a free ride just because they’re right 🙂
However, one side effect I do acknowledge is the fact that I am way more likely to be sympathetic to individual motivations than group motivations. Oft times I have a small handful of characters fighting against a vast conspiracy. (And admit it, doing the reverse would hardly be dramatic.)
2 Comments
Steve Buchheit · August 18, 2009 at 10:00 am
As one of Steve’s biggest critics here 🙂 and someone who has read Steve’s work, what he says in his third paragraph he actually does. And he often gives the characters most sympathetic to his views the hardest time.
jack · August 19, 2009 at 5:58 pm
for what it’s worth, i always appreciated your political perspectives in your novels; you walk the wire between oversimplified and overwrought nicely.
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